Category: Mental Health

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Mental Health

How to Maintain Mental Health from Summer to Fall

Seasonal Changes Affect Women’s Mental Health

The annual shift from the warm, lazy days of summer to the cooling, darkening days of fall can and often does affect women’s feelings, stirring melancholy to rise up to the surface.

Many of us feel echoes of loss and the hints of winter’s upcoming celebrations and darkness. The changes in sunlight, temperature, and return to time indoors can stimulate and disrupt us.

For those of us who have a harder time keeping an even keel, we may suffer during changes of season. Fall can feel like a wind sweeping through, stirring us up and scattering us around.

Is it hard to trust the natural shifts and changes in our own inner and outer worlds? Do we turn depressed or anxious, destabilized, or fall into painful states of being? If so, we may need extra attention and TLC to adjust.

How can we accept these natural, predictable yearly shifts? How can we prepare for the upcoming transition into fall and winter?

Here are some ideas from Villa Kali Ma, as to how we might embrace the wisdom of nature’s seasonal shifts and go more gracefully into the next chapter.

Do women struggle with mental health more in the summer or fall season?

Seasonal Affective Disorder is triggered by the change of season, most commonly kicking in around the fall. Although some women struggle with summer, too, more of us tend to struggle at the end of summer, as darker seasons appear on the horizon.

This struggle shifting from summer to fall has natural and social components. In part, we are affected by changes in sunlight, the amount of outdoor time (nature and being outdoors are healing and regulating, and good for mental health), and dropping temperatures.

At the same time, many women are affected by the long-reinforced pattern of fall being a back-to-school time of year, as well as anticipation of the winter holidays, which bring family topics to the fore.

Signs of Seasonal Affective Disorder include losing energy, feelings of sadness, and a dropping away of feelings of connection, purpose, and inspiration.

We also might find ourselves turning to self-soothing behaviors like overeating or spending aimless time on the internet or phone, as our old coping behaviors appear in response to the increase of sadness and pain internally.

What are some ways women can maintain their mental health in the fall?

Take Care of the Body

When it comes to maintaining a better state of being during the shift of seasons, there are many body-oriented hacks that help.

Focus on nutrition, taking advantage of the sun when it is there, good workouts, sufficient sleep, and weekly time in nature. In general, when we keep our bodies happy and supplied with mood-regulating hormones through these natural practices, our state of mind will be much more resilient.

Stay in Connection

Connection with others is key to reducing isolation. Think of ways you could get more emotional contact with safe support during this time. People in recovery can double up on meetings, or attend a recovery-themed retreat. If you’re in therapy, you might consider scheduling some extra sessions, following the principle that prevention is the best medicine. Dedicated time having fun with positive friends and loved ones may do the trick, too.

Embrace the Season

Deliberately enjoying the best sides of a season can help, too. If we consciously choose to enjoy the golden light of Indian Summer, the arrival of squash and pumpkins at the farmers market, or the smell of drying walnut leaves, whatever it is that we personally love, we can align ourselves with the beauties of the season.

Journal to Prepare for Fall

Here is a suggestion for a journal writing prompt about the seasonal shift:

What do I love most about this time of year?

How might I get the most out of what this time of year offers?

What is hardest for me about this time of year?

How might I protect and care for myself during the difficult sides of this season?

What does fall mean to me personally? What does it mean to nature? What does it mean to my fellow humans?

Make a Fall Self Care Plan

If you think about it, each season is only 3 months long. Can we make and commit to a 90-day plan? If that feels too long, go month-by-month, starting with September. Think about what you can put on the calendar that will help you feel loved, supported, and treated like you matter.

Here is a way you could put that plan together.

Step One: Brainstorm

Free write and get out everything you think and feel about how you could have a good experience of this season, fall 2024.

I believe I can have a positive experience this fall by…

My vulnerabilities and areas of need this fall are…


Step Two: Remember Your Tools

Now that you’ve thought about the season from the bigger picture point of view, generate a list of all of your tools.

Be creative. Self-care can mean a lot of things. In our opinion here at Villa Kali Ma, a good self-care plan will address these very important pieces at the very least:

-Body – exercise, nutrition, sleep

-Emotions – feeling our feelings, connecting with others, releasing

–Inner Child – connecting with ourselves, having creative fun and giving ourselves our attention, scheduling things that will give us joy

-Support – getting help, contact, and connection with others

What are 10 tools I have that support my body to be happy?

-I can sleep in on the weekends

-I can make myself green juice

-I can go to yoga 3 X a week…

What are 10 tools I have that support my emotional health?

What are 10 tools I have to give love to my inner child?

What are 10 tools I have to help myself get support from others that help me?


Step Three: Put Self-Care on the Calendar

Whatever you came up with in your brainstorm and your list of tools, take a few pieces out and put them on the calendar. Choose low-hanging fruits, things that feel easy, fun, doable, and energizing. Where there are foreseeable difficulties, see if you can couch them between acts of self-care. Make a plan that feels good to you personally.

Villa Kali Ma offers mental health programs

Villa Kali Ma is a unique healing facility dedicated to helping women experience true mental health and happiness, at the deepest levels of being. We offer programs to treat traumatization, heal emotional wounds, and repair thoughts about ourselves and the world we inhabit.

Our experienced staff are prepared to address any variation of women’s suffering, and we have many tools, practitioners, and modalities at the ready. We treat addiction, trauma, and mental health troubles with a compassionate and effective blend of Western and Eastern modalities.

Villa Kali Ma supports women’s mental health

Since it was founded, Villa Kali Ma has served women’s mental health loyally, bringing innovative, alternative, and evidence-based breakthroughs to women in need of healing. We unite the best of the West with the ancient healing wisdom from the East.

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Mental Health

PMDD vs PMS

Most women can relate to experiencing a dip in mood about a week before menstruation, and the irritability, sensitivity, and vulnerability that well up.

Hormonal ebbs and flows are part of the biologically female experience. Each month, our energies rise and fall according to predictable rhythms.

Across the female population, there are some differences in the degree how which we may experience these hormonal rhythms, with some people experiencing greater distress than others.

While many experience Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), a small minority of women have a more serious case, known as Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD.)

What is the difference between PMDD and PMS?

PMS may include physical as well as mental health symptoms. It is typical to experience mild to moderate depression, to think more negative thoughts about ourselves, and to perceive our bodies and appearances in a more negative light (perhaps triggered by cravings to eat unhealthy food, bloating, or acne).

We may have less energy, need more sleep, and feel physical tenderness in our breasts or lower back. Monthly experiences of these symptoms are generally considered a normal part of the female experience.

If these symptoms appear around the same time in our cycle every month and go away again once our period starts, they are considered part of Premenstrual Syndrome, which affects many women.

Less commonly, some women have a more severe experience of hormonal fluctuations, in which symptoms are so extreme that they are disruptive. If PMS symptoms are so strong that they significantly affect the way you relate to other people, especially if it extends to how you relate to your work or how you treat people out in the world (not only loved ones at home), that may be a signal of PMDD.

What are the causes of PMDD and PMS?

The origin of PMS and PMDD are not conclusively determined, but an intricate relationship between mood and hormones is established.

Due to the complexity of the human body and the ways that biology informs subjective experience and vice versa, it’s difficult to say where the symptoms come from or to boil their presence down to a single cause.

It can be helpful to know that those with a tendency towards depression will likely experience both PMS and PMDD more severely than those who do not ordinarily experience depressed mood.

What are the signs and symptoms of PMDD and PMS?

Similarities between PMS and PMDD

Broadly speaking, the symptoms of PMS and PMDD are very similar. Both can include changes in mood, greater feelings of vulnerability, and irritability, including crying and negative thoughts. At the physical level, both can give rise to fatigue, food cravings, muscle and joint pain, headaches, bloating, and tender breasts.

Differences between PMS and PMDD

There are some important differences between PMS and PMDD, mainly in the severity of dysphoria.

Depression

Whereas PMS is very often accompanied by mild to moderate depression, it is a sign of PMDD if the sadness or hopelessness is so extreme that it disrupts your life significantly, or if it comes with thoughts of suicide. If you or a loved one are experiencing suicidal thoughts, please get help right away because these can easily become dangerous.


Mood Swings

Similarly, some moodiness is associated with PMS, but dramatic mood swings, overwhelming feelings of anger and being out of control, as well as extreme suddenness in the change of mood are signs you might be dealing with a case of PMDD.


Anxiety

Some women feel anxious as a part of PMS, but strong anxiety is more commonly associated with PMDD. If the anxiety feels like extreme edginess and fear, that is a sign it could be PMDD.

Life Outlook and Self-Care

During PMS, it is normal that some changes to one’s self-care take place, for example, to accommodate lower energy levels. For women experiencing PMDD however, feelings of hopelessness and extreme negative states of mood and mind can lead to dropping all self-care practices and giving up on taking care of important activities in the world.

How are PMDD and PMS diagnosed?

PMS and PMDD are diagnosed in clinical settings, by a doctor or gynecologist. After a discussion of symptoms with your doctor, an assessment is made.

Assessment may include observation of one’s mood and tracking one’s own cycle for a couple of months, to gather data points and to get a better picture of how the symptoms are playing out. This means that you would need to log and journal on your symptoms in relationship to your cycle for a month or two and then bring your observations to your next appointment.

To validate a diagnosis of PMS or PMDD, it would need to be clearly established that your symptoms are linked to your menstrual cycle, starting about a week before your period and going away again once your period finishes.

What is the treatment for PMDD and PMS?

There are different options for women with PMS and PMDD, and the best approaches are integrative, addressing the body as well as the mind.

Lifestyle changes are the most powerful form of support for most mental health problems, including PMS and PMDD.

Improvements in diet, sleep, and exercise are the key. When the body is in its optimal state, hormonal fluctuations can be harmonized. Regular, cyclical changes of energy can be smoothed and softened.

You may also want to consider the benefits of disconnecting from excessive use of technology. Artificial materials, chemicals, and electromagnetic frequency imbalances connected with phones and computers are believed by some to interfere with the body’s functioning. Being more tuned in to entertainment or information, rather than one’s current bodily state, tends to amplify suffering in the longer run.

For any mood disorder, no matter what the origin, a big support may come through doing what what we can to be more aligned with nature, whatever that means to us, and however it is available to us.

Examples of practices that help us line up with nature include sleeping when it’s dark out and waking with the sun, getting enough outdoor time, moving our bodies frequently throughout the day, and eating the freshest foods we can.

Overall, for women with PMS or PMDD, we at Villa Kali Ma would recommend a movement practice (like yoga), some kind of mindfulness practice (such as meditation), as well as regular self-expression through creativity.

It is good to be aware also that trauma, mental health disorders, and active addiction make PMS and PMDD symptoms worse, so if these are at play in your life still, it would be good to get treatment for these. Ideally, a holistically-minded program would be best, to help address all the ways that hormones and mood influence our experiences as women.

Villa Kali Ma can assist women with depression

At Villa Kali Ma we are dedicated to supporting women to heal from trauma, mental illness, and addiction. We use traditional, alternative medicine, and contemporary scientific treatment approaches together as one, taking the best of each to help each woman discover her path to happiness.

If you’re struggling with low mood, alongside your period, or just in general, you might consider some of our programs for women. We take a compassionate, curious approach to suffering and its antidotes. We would love to meet you and hear your story!

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Mental Health

Mental Health and New Year’s Resolutions Can Impact Mental Health

Happy New Year, Dear Villa Kali Ma Readers!

Goodbye, 2023, thank you for all you brought. Hello 2024, nice to meet you!

Dear readers, on behalf of Villa Kali Ma, I wish you all the best in this new cycle. May you find yourself face to face with a year of brightness, saturation, and depth, of feeling real in your own body and present in your story.

Like many people, I have mixed feelings about the time of year when we release the last year and welcome in the new.

I like that the year ends with a bang of celebration, a culmination of what came before. I like lights, mystery, and presents. I like laughing around the fireplace with the people who’ve known me longer than I’ve known myself, even if there’s a little pain mixed in.

But sometimes, releasing into the openness of time, I can feel a little lost. An old familiar stab of dread or uncertainty, facing the unassigned, undefined wilds of a new episode of life.

Today I’m wondering if you, like me, face the yearly bugaboo of resolutions – whether or not this year will be the year we finally make that change? Will we finally get it together, will we master ourselves, and overcome our gift for self-defeat?

The Statistics of Change

New Year’s Resolutions are a dazzling failure for the majority of people who make them. Statistics indicate a rather bleak outlook, with only 8% of people who make resolutions for the year following up on them, and a staggering 80% of people relinquishing their vows through an unceremonious giving up by February.

This makes me sad, as it implies something half-hearted or incomplete in us, a failure of will.

For those with addiction, failed willpower is no surprise – we know this one inside and out. How can we will ourselves to make positive changes, when we fear in our hearts that we belong to our self-destruction?

Can we be serious about serving the life force within us, even in as small a way as to meet a personal fitness goal – when we have known ourselves in the past to serve another, uncannier element? Something that pulled us down into the dark?

This changes with recovery, of course. Through the ordinary but still awe-inspiring miracles of recovery, we can develop and embody the vulnerable, brave commitment to thrive, after all.

We learn that it is possible to live in an upward spiral that grows towards the sun. This takes place verifiably, despite the feeling about ourselves that persists in the beginning, sometimes quiet, sometimes shouting, that somehow we and the world would be better if we weren’t even here.

Tut, it is a lie of course! (And even we know it somewhere deep down). But still, with such an omnipresence of the voices of the forces of the inner enemy, how do we know for sure we will prevail? (We don’t. We surrender to the life inside us again, who prevails for us. Through us, on our behalf, out of love for us, keeping us together, after all. We ask for a miracle, and we say thank you when it comes).

In recovery, we break the statistics of our past behavior, showing to ourselves and others that there is, in fact, an eye of calm at the center of the hurricane of every person who once belonged to addiction. We can live a life that keeps to the eye, stays in the center, and wreaks no havoc. We can be the center of a bell, bringing harmonies and beauties through our vibration.

What Are Some Reasons That Lead People to Quit Their New Year Resolutions?

Statistics say almost half of the people making resolutions already know while resolving that they will fail. What an idea! My heart goes out to the person, writing down, saying to themselves, declaring to others, “I will!”, already knowing that they will not.

Why is it that we fail in our resolutions? How is our resolve so weak? Here are some possibilities that could be affecting us.

1. Forced Timing

The timing of the New Year may or may not coincide with a personal cycle or readiness for change. Personal change has its season. We need to listen to ourselves and not always join in the collective for a once-a-year change, but ask ourselves – what do I want to change, when is a good time to make this change, how can I support this change?


2. Shoulds Versus Desires

Sometimes resolutions fail because they’re not desired changes, but rather a sense of “should”. Perhaps we feel that we should quit drinking because other people want us to, or because we judge ourselves. That is not the same thing as having decided to enter the transformational liberating fires of a new life.


3. Realistic Cost and Benefit Analysis

Some resolutions fail because they do not take into account the existing system and its homeostatic advantages. Whatever we do, we do because it works for us, one way or another.

We cannot decide to go all in on a change before we have answered these questions:

What are all the advantages of staying the same, of not making this particular change?

What, on the other hand, does it cost me to stay the same, not making this particular change?

What benefit will come to me from making this change?

What might be difficult for me about making this change?

Am I willing to undergo this difficulty for the sake of positive change? Does the potential benefit of making this change outweigh the potential cost?

How Can a Person Create Healthy Resolutions?

If we have lined up our will and we are committed to a change, the rest is relatively easy in comparison.

The key to how we can support ourselves to succeed lies in recasting resolutions as goals.

Goals are smaller, more targeted, and more time-based. As the SMART acronym reminds us, helpful goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant (to your values and what you want to achieve), and time-based.

Try this format for setting a new kind of resolution:

WHAT – Desired Outcome – written in the present tense, as if already fulfilled: eg, I speak Spanish fluently.

WHY – Reason for Outcome – written in terms of your values, again as if already fulfilled: eg, I speak Spanish fluently because I value foreign languages, learning, other cultures, reading Pablo Neruda in the original, etc.

SMART GOAL:

For January, I will spend 15 minutes a day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, on my Spanish language learning app. I will reevaluate and set a new frame for continuing at the end of January. If I miss a day, that’s okay, but then I need to make it up to myself on one of the other days.

Then ask yourself – is this a SMART goal? Is it:

Specific enough?

Measurable enough?

Attainable enough?

Relevant enough to my WHAT and my WHY?

Time-based enough?

Villa Kali Ma Can Help You With Your Goals

A mile is walked one step at a time. What if you want to walk very many miles?

Goals can be laid out like a map of a walk across the country. Perhaps there is a very long way to go. But if we are realistic with ourselves, about how much can reasonably, sustainably be walked in each walking session, how many breaks we need, and when and where to rest, we could quite believably achieve it. As they say, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Goals build on themselves. Those who set reasonable, realistic goals for themselves are more likely to achieve success. To achieve success at smaller goals, we build confidence in ourselves. Our confidence then comes from our own experience.  Of course I can do this challenging thing. I have done challenging things before.

If you have trauma, addiction, or mental illness of any kind, the chance that you are dealing with inner ambivalence about making a positive change is pretty high. This is because everything inside of our psyches is balanced carefully to cope with the symptoms of our pain.

The traumatized among us are scared to change because we haven’t yet learned how to cope with our overwhelming inner worlds. We know, consciously or unconsciously, that any behavior change, even deciding to meditate for 15 minutes a day, could bring up difficult material which we will then need to figure out a way to deal with. Dread and agitation have us captive.

If this is you – have compassion for yourself. Traumatization is very, very challenging in ways the average person does not recognize. You deserve all the gentleness in the world for recovering your simple right, ability, and confidence to change and grow.

Take it slow, get help if you can. Make just feeling okay inside your skin without substances and other self-destructive behaviors your primary goal, perhaps your only resolution. Everything else will come with time.

As always, we at Villa Kali Ma are here to help, sister.

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Mental Health

Tips to Manage Post-Holiday Blues

Holiday Feelings

For many of us, the holidays are a time of mixed feelings. Whatever our family situation looks like – whether we’re surrounded by loved ones, celebrating with friends, or in solitude – most of us tend to revisit our feelings about ourselves and our families of origin this time of year.

If we live in the northern hemisphere, nature supports us to spend time indoors, as well, through colder weather and shortened daylight hours. As we know, time spent indoors and in darkness tends to bring out the blue notes.

Paused in our normal routines, we might be eating more, exercising less, suddenly more or less social than we’re accustomed to, as well.

The activity of the holidays leads inevitably towards an afterward time of interiority and pause. Reflection on what has come before, and preparation for what we imagine or hope will come next.

Whether our feelings during the end of the year are positive or painful, it’s a good idea to remember and validate for ourselves that the holidays are a big deal. Even joy, togetherness, connection, and celebration can be a lot to hold. When they’re over, we end up with a lot to process.

What Are Post-Holiday Blues?

There’s a phenomenon called the “post-holiday blues”. Post-holiday blues are temporary feelings that set in after the holidays are over, triggered by returning to normal life and starting a new year after a period of holiday intensity.

Post-holiday blues can include loneliness, sadness, flare-ups of low self-esteem, and a desire to check out of reality. Self-destructive, distracting patterns of behavior can show up. We may realize we’re avoiding our feelings.

These January blues can easily spread to one’s thoughts about the upcoming year, giving us a false expectation of what’s to come based on feeling depleted, let down, or moody now.

If you find yourself with a case of post-holiday “meh” this January, don’t worry. You’re not alone – it’s just the blues. Like all symptoms and struggles, your feelings are knocking at your door, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Times of melancholy are always an invitation to greater self-intimacy – some valuable get-to-know-you time spent with yourself.

What Triggers Post-Holiday Blues?

For some people, post-holiday blues kick in when we start missing the positive feelings associated with the holidays. If you tend to look forward to and enjoy the energy of the holidays, you might simply be feeling disappointed and let down that they’re over.

The inner child, the one inside us who gets excited about celebrations, presents, sweets, magic, and fun, can easily be a source of sadness once the holidays have concluded.

If this is you, the cure lies in connecting with your inner child nature, helping her understand how life works, and that there will be other positive experiences coming soon in the future. Reassurance that it’s perfectly natural and okay with you (speaking to the inner child from the point of view of the inner parent inside you) to feel like this now is sometimes all that’s needed.

On the positive side, the inner child is easily cheered by small pleasures of human life – going for a sloshy walk in rain boots, collecting leaves and pebbles, and getting out into the momentum of life is often enough. Knowing that it’s your inner child who’s sad about the end of a bright time and that all she needs is some cheering up, may be enough to turn the tide.

Love, Guilt, and Frustration: Those Family Feelings

For many of us, the holidays bring up very complicated feelings that we aren’t able to fully process until we’re back in our lives again. Once we have space, time, and enough privacy, the feelings we couldn’t afford to feel in the moment come to us to be felt.

Things like seeing family members who for whatever reason have the effect of making us feel bad about ourselves, re-exposure to triggering family dynamics and old roles, being around alcohol or other drugs, and the pressure and stress to join together as a family unit again without too much friction can create a lot of tension in the body.

Pent-up, suppressed frustrations about even little petty family squabbles can easily turn inward into depression. We start telling ourselves there’s something wrong with us, rather than listening to the small but important voices within who are still feeling angry, hurt, or upset about all the “little things” that happened during the holidays.

If this is you, validate that you have every right to feel anger. As long as you don’t lash out at people, anger is just information and boundaries, it’s not anything bad about you. Women especially often need help knowing anger is normal, and that we are not alone in feeling irritation or even anger when having contact with family members.

If we don’t understand anger, we feel guilty. Anger isn’t the opposite of love, and doesn’t mean we’re bad people. Anger is just information about the edges of ourselves, where we need help having healthy separateness.

We’re all in the same boat ultimately. Everyone feels anger and frustration when needs aren’t met, and when boundaries are crossed, intentionally or unintentionally. Most of us also feel bad about it because we don’t want to hurt our loved ones or make them feel bad either.

If you’re experiencing that guilt-anger-love hangover this season, see if you can be kind to yourself about the fact that you’re angry, and don’t make a negative self-image out of it. Instead, try a “just like me” statement to soothe yourself.

Just like me, people all over the world struggle with loving their families and also needing to have a separate self

Just like me, people all over the world feel angry and guilty around their families sometimes

What Are Some Facts About Individuals Experiencing Post-Holiday Blues?

As a seasonal, time-specific kind of depression, post-holiday blues haven’t been extensively studied, but some studies on the effects of the holidays do exist. One review of holiday-related studies concludes that while the holidays themselves aren’t associated with a change in mental health status for most, the season is followed by a noticeable rise in people experiencing dysphoria, or low moods.

It is also very likely that seasonal affective disorder is at play in the phenomenon as well, at least in the northern hemisphere, as the holidays mark the start of the winter season.

Those who experience post-holiday blues may be able to link them to the after-effects of stress, related to weeks of seasonal shopping, preparation and managing of group gatherings, increased eating and drinking, disruption of normal routines, the impacts of air travel and driving, being a guest or hosting guests, and in general, revisiting family dynamics.

When Are Post-Holiday Blues Considered Serious?

The post-holiday blues are most likely a passing, temporary mood disorder. You can expect that you will regulate and reset your normal mental health status within a few weeks. Your body, emotions, and mind just need some time to process everything that happened, feel the feelings, and make space for the next thing.

On the other hand, for people who already struggle with depression, the post-holiday blues can set off a bout of more serious blues. If you tend towards depression to begin with, it’s important to look out for the possibility of post-holiday blues turning into a more serious episode.

If you have a self-care program that normally helps you stay well in your heart and mind, such as an exercise regime, regular contact with loving friends, and so on, it would be wise to get that program back in place sooner rather than later after the holidays.

For women with a history of addiction, it’s important to take the post-holiday blues more seriously as well, for the simple reason that they can represent a relapse trigger. As women who didn’t feel good in our skins without substances to help us cope, we’re always a little more vulnerable than most to getting sucked back into negative patterning.

Proactively going to meetings, refreshing our commitment to sobriety, and making sure we connect with other people who will understand and accept us for exactly how we feel is key during this time.

Tips for Managing Post-Holiday Blues

1. This, Too, Shall Pass

The post-holiday blues too shall pass. Even if your wholehearted goal was to stay depressed, one day you would still wake up feeling different – a little more lively, awake, curious, and lighthearted. It’s just how we are.

Remember that the animal within you, the child within you, who loves life and wants to find out what happens next, will most likely get you through this phase once you’ve had a chance to feel the feelings and process everything you need to process. It’s a natural thing and you’ll get through it.


2. Stay Connected With People Who Get It

If you can think of anyone in your world who will get what you’re going through and be nice to you about it without encouraging you to stay stuck in victimization, call them and tell them how you’re feeling. Hear their holiday stories as well. If you speak it out (to the right people), you can send your suffering gently on its merry way.


3. Exercise

Exercise is nature’s antidepressant. You can’t stay depressed and have a good exercise routine at the same time. If you choose to exercise, the blues will have a hard time sticking around.


4. Go Outside

Go outside every day, no matter what the weather is, and whether you feel like it or not. Just 20 minutes a day walking outside will suffice. If it helps, set a short-term goal that’s easily achieved, like “Every day for 7 days straight, I will walk for 20 minutes in my neighborhood” rather than worrying about it forever. After the first 7 days, you may want to extend but don’t evaluate until you complete the 7 days.


5. Green Time Not Screen Time

If you can, get out in nature. If no nature is accessible, get to the greenest freshest zone you can find. The natural world lifts our spirits, reminds us of our belonging to all of our lives, and restores our liveliness. The beneficial impacts of nature have been documented by studies galore, but also you can just feel it for yourself. This is opposed to screen time, which has documented negative effects on mental health, which you can also feel for yourself.


6. Sleep It Off

Get enough sleep, and if you need it, let yourself sleep in when you can. Do less, and lower the expectations just for now, if you can do that without swinging into too much self-indulgence. Moderation is key, but don’t make war on the body for showing the symptoms of depression. If you need to be soft and slow, find ways to do that comfortably, cozily, and kindly. (This might seem like it runs counter to the exercise recommendation, but it doesn’t. Do both. Get tired through exercise and then rest fully).


7. Stay Away From Social Media

As everyone knows by now, social media makes people feel terrible. Stay off it. Consider something like a social media fast for 12 days straight. As a trade-off, allow other forms of (non-screen time) entertainment, like reading paper books.

May your New Year come with many gifts, dear reader. Sending you all our love for a bright and healthy 2024!

Categories
Mental Health

Turning the Love Beam Back on You: Shifting out of Codependency

Codependent Relationships Thwart Growing Up

Individuation is the psychological journey of becoming a whole, unique individual in our own right. A life-long process, individuation is how we gradually polish the diamond of our original Self, developing and becoming more and more who we really are at the core of our being. 

Codependent relationships typically stand in the way of the individuation process, by prioritizing psychological fusion at the expense of individual freedom and growth. 

Two Become One – But Not in the Way We Really Want

Psychological fusion means two people becoming one – but in a bad way. When we are codependent we entangle ourselves with another person in a way that’s called merging. 

Merging means that we sooner or later fall into dysfunctional patterns of control, enabling of unhealthy behaviors, and overly fearing the elements of aloneness and self-responsibility that are involved in growing into our own journey.

That’s because in our not-yet-healed state, we form a bond with another that is centered at some level around our wounding, in which we both attempt to care for the other, compensate for unmet psychological needs, and develop a condition of mutual over-reliance.

There is a higher, spiritual version of sacred union, wherein we each hold onto ourselves, and yet also can join to create a third energy. Codependence may be a kind of childlike attempt at that, but until we’ve had a chance to heal psychologically, it will be hard to sustain real freedom and wholeness in each person.

I’ll Heal You and You’ll Heal Me

The state of wounded merging (also called trauma-bonding) develops strongly where each person meets needs for the other that actually the other person should, developmentally speaking, learn to do for themselves. 

It can be quite sweet in the beginning. It’s like we agree to hold hurt pieces of each other until we’re each strong enough to do it for ourselves. We make up for missing pieces of childhood, providing safety, understanding, love, food, or whatever else is needed. 

We don’t have to make codependent relationships bad and wrong. We do need to see that they are relationships between two wounded children finding a way to get what they need by taking care of each other. No relationship can stay that way forever, because we do want, deep inside, to grow up, ripen, and mature spiritually.  

How Long Can We Avoid Ourselves?

Over-focusing on another can serve as a way of avoiding our own feelings, needs, and trauma. Codependency can be a distracting, addictive “fixer-upper” project, in which we direct our life purpose towards helping, fixing or caring for another person rather than looking at our own lives.

Each party takes on specific pieces for the other, making sacrifices and providing protections for the other. Both can become addicted to the same thing: using the other person as a way to delay facing one’s own life story. 

We can do this for a long, long, long time. But the call of our own life will never really go away, even if we try not to listen to it. 

Codependent relationships have negative impacts for both parties. Typically these negative impacts relate to the ways that we enable each other to stay stuck in patterns that aren’t actually positive or life-affirming. It starts to feel static and stifling. 

So many of us start to wonder: can we change the deal?

Changing The Deal

The hidden problem of the old deal is each person gives up a portion of their true Self, while requiring that the other do something for us. We each trade in our autonomy and self-responsibility, in exchange for emotional security, understanding, support, approval, or whatever goodies the other person gives us. The agreement boils down, if we look closely, to some kind of surrender of individuality in exchange for being taken care of.

What can we do about it? Well, once we realize that we are busy holding someone else’s wound for them, we can start to play with the idea of holding our own. We take our wounds back from the other’s arms, and gradually give them back what we have been holding for them. 

What wounds do we still need someone to hold, and how can we gradually be the one doing that holding? Here’s a journal prompt for you to explore this question. 

Journal Prompt: Turn the Love Beam Back on You

  1. All You Give. Write out all the things you do for your partner (or other loved one). Include physical world activities, like making sure they have something to eat, as well as time spent of more subtle emotional activities, like supporting them emotionally, thinking of solutions for their problems, or even just worrying about them. Any of your own time you spend focusing on them, their needs, and their shape of their lives.   
  2. Imagine Receiving from Someone Like You. Now imagine and write about what your life might be like if you were your own partner. If you met someone like you, who wanted to give you all that you have been giving away, what would that be like? How might you bloom and blossom under that beam of love? Does any resistance surface? What needs of yours still need the warm embrace of your own life-giving love? 

Thanks for reading!

Categories
Mental Health

SAD Girl Summer

SAD girl Summer 

Sun’s out and the sky is shining. Everyone loves summer… right? 

For some people, Summer feels like the season of dread. If this is you, keep reading to learn more about what causes these feelings of summer stress and mental health tips to help make this summer a little bit more comfortable! 

5 things about summer that might bring on the Big SAD 

You might expect summer to be a universal mood booster, right? In the season of concerts, sleeping in and sunbathing, what could be a trigger for mood distress? As it turns out, a number of things- and you’re definitely not alone in feeling stressed out and totally over summer already. 

  1. The heat and humidity makes it difficult to enjoy being outdoors.
  2. Changes to schedules disrupt your routines and make the days unpredictable or stressful. 
  3. Added stress from trying to plan for travel and change or the additional financial expense of summer events. 
  4. Lots of pressure to “relax” and “have fun” to other people’s standards. 
  5. Higher pollen counts can increase histamine levels and cause dysregulated emotions. 

How Common is Seasonal Affective Disorder in Summer?

Summer is a season of high energy that’s often associated with less work, more play, and days in the sun. But those things aren’t enjoyable for everyone and if you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of people who feel completely overwhelmed, overstimulated and over the summer heat, you are not alone! 

 

Seasonal Affective Disorder, also called SAD, is thought to impact about 6% of Americans with around 10% of those affected during the Spring and Summer months. By the numbers, it’s not super common to experience Seasonal Affective Disorder but you’re certainly not alone if you’re feeling some type of way about the rising heat.

Is SAD just depression?

The acronym for Seasonal Affective Disorder can lend itself to feeling like the whole experience is depression in the more stereotypical form. You may expect that SAD in any season will feel like, well, sadness. But it does not. 

Seasonal mood disorders have many facets, just like other mood disorders. Your moods may be affected by feeling more sadness or loss of interest in your activities. But that’s not all! SAD may manifest as increased frustration, stress, overwhelm, rapidly cycling moods or more. During Summer, anxiety is a likely manifestation of this type of mood dysregulation. 

Summer SAD has different symptoms than other seasons

The sizzling temps and thick air can contribute to a sense of being trapped even in wide open spaces. When the temperature rises outside, your body may require more energy to help you keep cool and, in turn, leave you feeling burnt out and exhausted when you feel like you’ve not done much. 

While winter Seasonal Affective Disorder is known to cause overeating, over sleeping and a general sense of malaise, summer SAD is likely to leave you feeling agitated, anxious and overworked. You may have heightened feelings of irritation, guilt or anger. It makes sense given they have different causes, but it can be frustrating when you’re trying to understand what’s happening and how to fix it. 

We’ve got tips to help you cope 

Now that you know what’s up with summertime sadness (hey Lana, thanks for the anthem) and why it happens, let’s get into the real important stuff. What can you do about it? These mental health tips can help year round but are especially important in summer if you’re feeling blue. 

Seek cool and dark spaces when you’re feeling the heat 

If you’re feeling agitated, overworked or overwhelmed this summer, take some time to lean into decompression in a dark and temperature regulated space. Turn the lights down low and keep fans or air conditioners running while you rest. Cool and dark spaces can help your body and mind both cool down from working hard, while also offering some relief from physical symptoms like migraines, dehydration and eye strain. 

Prioritize sleep and rest 

Longer daylight hours and more to do can leave you feeling like there are plenty of hours in the day, but not nearly enough at night. Struggling with sleep and rest can be the same thing but they aren’t always. If you’re finding that you’re not getting enough sleep, set a regular bedtime and do your best to stick to it at least 4 days a week. Ensure you’re stopping work and making relaxation a priority at least 2 hours before that time. 

 

When rest seems in short supply, pick one day per week where you schedule nothing. Leave that day open to whatever moves you in the moment and honor your need to rest. 

Consider using the cooler night hours to connect with nature 

Love being outside but don’t dig the heat and constant sun? Use the evening hours to spend time outside. Watch the moonlight on the ocean, enjoy an evening walk or do yoga in the garden beneath the stars. Nature is just outside your door at all hours! 

Honor your emotional experience in this season 

Guilt is a heavy burden and it takes up a lot of your emotional energy. If you feel like you should feel one way or another about summer and you’re just not, that’s okay! Honor the reality of your emotions and reflect on the ways you connect with different seasons or weather patterns. You may find your connection is more deeply rooted in other seasons and that’s a beautiful thing to discover, especially if you can be with the emotional experience of this season without guilt. 

No matter how you’re experiencing these summer months, we hope you’ve found these mental health tips helpful. If you or someone you love is experiencing substance abuse or looking for a new way to move through recovery, call us today. 

760-814-8214

Categories
Mental Health

8 Steps on the Journey of Healing the Inner Child

The Inner Child

The Journey of Healing the Inner Child is the quintessential healing epic. That’s because the Inner Child is at the core of our Self. 

Like the center of a flower, the petals of our life’s purpose all unfold from the Inner Child. Even when we grow up, there is always a part of us who is still the Inner Child. 

The Inner Child is an original. She is our gemstone, our butterfly wing pattern, our snowflake.

Inner Child knows the way to our highest potential. When we rescue the Inner Child from the harm that was done to her – the memory of which lives on in our bodies as trauma – we can at last become who we really mean to be.  

Meeting Our Wounds

Even though the Inner Child is where our joy, our creativity, our presence, our happiness and satisfaction at being alive lie, she is also connected to our deepest pain. 

Before we can get to the original, unscathed Inner Child, we first have to meet the Wounded Child, the one who shows us how we got hurt by the world.

It’s painful to encounter the Wounded Child. But it is also deeply meaningful when we witness that the Inner Child recovers, and returns to her original nature. 

8 Steps on the Journey of Healing the Inner Child

1. Make Contact

The Journey of Healing the Inner Child begins with getting to know her, and creating an environment of such safety and acceptance that she begins to trust you. Much like adopting an animal who has lived in a shelter and might have some reasons not to trust human beings, your Inner Child also has some reasons not to trust human beings. Therefore, have patience and be gentle as the sunrise. But say to yourself, “Hi Inner Child. I want to get to know you. I’m here”. She’s listening.

2. Build a Relationship Based on Trust

Children respond to love and attention like plants to sunlight and water, so if you give love and attention to your Inner Child, she will bloom. Build trust through using kind, loving words when you sense her showing up within you, taking time to check in with her, and letting her have some influence on your day. “Inner Child, I’m so happy you’re here. I love you so much, you’re the child I always wanted. Do you want to read our book or watch a movie tonight?”  

3. Play!

Children need play. They die without it. So whatever it is that feels like fun to you, do that, do it a lot, and your Inner Child will be able to attach to you and feel safe at last. Read children’s books. Draw. Play games. Make pancakes. Take baths. Pick flowers. Collect rocks. Do puzzles. Take time to be together, and let her choose what’s fun.   

4. Adopt a Learning Mindset

Being allowed to explore, to try new things just for the experience, is important for the Inner Child and might not have been fully allowed during your actual childhood. Adopt a learning mindset: you have a right to try things just because they sound fun. You have a right to fail or change your mind. You have a right to grow just through experiences themselves.

5. Protect the Child

Children need protection and to not have to think about overwhelming, adult things. It’s ok to shield yourself during this process, from topics and people that make you feel less safe in the world. Picture tucking your Inner Child away in a deep inner chamber, safe from the outside world. 

6. Celebrate the Child’s Spontaneous Nature

Children are delightful and surprising even if they’re a handful sometimes. When impulsivity, loudness, unruliness, messiness, a desire to follow fun rather than do her homework shows up, celebrate that Child Energy bubbling up in you, as much as you can. If encouraged, the Inner Child can lead you to a brighter, deeper life.

7. Get ready for the Wounds

The Inner Child has wounds. She has to cry, she has to scream and throw tantrums, because a lot happened to her that was both devastating and out of control. Her feelings of victimization, fury, and grief are all natural human reactions to situations that hurt the soul. Validate her.

8. Support the Inner Child

Support your Inner Child. Help her find words, draw pictures, run it out, hug it out. When the feelings are over, change focus to something that gives her joy. A capable adult who loved and cared about her should have been there back then, to show her how to release overwhelming feelings out of the body. Ok, so it didn’t happen then. But you’re here now – better late than never. 

If you or an important woman in your life are struggling with substance use or a history of trauma that continues to affect daily life, reach out to us today to learn more about our treatment programs. Call (866) 950-0648 to learn more. 

Categories
Mental Health

How Does Stress Affect Your Body? 

Your body is designed to handle small amounts of stress. You are a well-constructed machine with the capability to overcome most anything that happens to you on a regular day. But what happens when you’re not having a regular day or, as this pandemic marches on, you can’t even remember a regular day? 

Let’s take a look at how stress affects your body and what that means for you. 

The Anatomy of Stress 

A stressed body feels like a body under pressure. When you’re feeling stressed, you aren’t at your most effective. From the top of your head to the tips of your toes, each part of your holistic being responds to the chain reaction of stress. Every system of your body is affected. 

What Does a Stressed Body Feel Like?

Like many things, stress is, unfortunately, a holistic experience. You feel it in your core and every vital system to your survival. Let’s look at each of our primary systems, how stress impacts their function, and the way you experience its effect. 

Muscles and Bones

When stress begins to rise in your body, your muscles coil and prepare for the impact ahead. Carrying around the tension of that preparation can lead to cramping and extraneous pressure on your skeletal system. The way you carry yourself changes to accommodate the tight muscles caused by stress. 

Breathing 

Stress destabilizes the pace you bring air into your lungs. When your breathing is rapid, your body struggles to keep up with supplying those important tissues with oxygen. This may feel like shortness of breath, tightness in your chest, or even trigger asthma attacks in vulnerable people. 

Heart

Much like your breathing, your pulse picks up when you’re feeling the pressure of the world around you. Stress causes a hiccup in the coordination between the flow of nutrient-rich blood from your heart to your body. Over time, it can cause chronic inflammation in your arteries.

Hormones 

Your body recognizes stress by its hormone signature. Most famously, cortisol levels are associated with both your stress response as well as your kidney function and energy levels. There are other hormones that interact with your stress levels though. Adrenaline, glucose, and even testosterone levels are all responsive to the stress you experience. 

Sleep

Stress can keep you awake at night, pondering the worries and woes you didn’t have time to worry about in your waking hours. Stress-induced insomnia affects your circadian rhythm and can make it feel impossible to let your body relax enough to find rest. 

Skin and Hair 

Stress can make skin and hair feel dull and temperamental. From flaring existing skin conditions to causing hair loss, there’s no shortage of the way stress can impact some of your most visible body systems. 

Digestive

Also called the gut-brain connection, your digestive system is undeniably linked to the things you think and feel. It’s no wonder that stress can cause all manner of gut discomfort. Gas, constipation, and heartburn are some of the most commonly reported impacts of stress on the stomach.

Reproductive

With stress playing havoc on hormonal systems, it’s no surprise to find that it also may impact your reproductive system. From desire to menstruation, there may be a change in the familiar patterns of your body when you’re stressed. 

Immune

When your body is battling your stress levels, it’s a whole lot harder to fight off intruding germs and bugs. Your immune system feels the strain and it exhibits a weakened response to the outside world that can make you sick. 

Can stress cause long-term damage? 

Stress shouldn’t be left unmanaged or without holistic care, it needs to alleviate the fight-or-flight intensity of it.  Over time, the reactions your body experiences due to stress can wear on you. Long-term stress can lead to serious diseases of important bodily systems. 

Chronic stress can cause or contribute to a number of disorders. From direct correlation to a waterfall effect, there is evidence that it can also contribute to the development of substance use disorders.

It’s possible to be addicted to stress too 

For some, stress is something that drives the desire to numb that often precedes substance use. For others though, stress can be an addiction all its own. If all you know is adrenaline-laced intensity, relaxation may feel unsafe to your body. Stress addiction stands apart from substance use recovery but many of the treatments can overlap in how they engage your body to begin rewriting your healing. 

Identifying the cause of your stress and the effects you feel from it in your daily life can be a powerful tool to stop it in its tracks. Through a sustainable and consistent routine, you can develop the tools to reduce your stress alongside your road to recovery today. At Villa Kali Ma, we offer programs to help our clients combat the effects of stress on a holistic level. Connect with us today to learn more about how we help our clients heal and manage stress. 

Categories
Mental Health

How to Start Journaling for Mental Health

Journaling is one of the easiest, most accessible, and low-cost ways to nurture mental health. 

There are many ways to journal. It’s ok to experiment and play around until you find a practice that fits you. If you’re doing journaling at all, then you’re learning and you’re on your way.

Free writing

As the name suggests, the practice of free writing involves writing freely and without stopping for a predetermined amount of time, such as for 15 minutes. 

Important to understand is that you are not writing anything specific, you are more like dumping out the contents of your mind, a bit like you might overturn a messy drawer to see what is in there. 

Like meditation, the practice is to simply notice what is there without engaging with it particularly, letting it appear & disappear according to its own flows.

You are not writing for the outcome, as you might if you were composing a poem or an essay. It’s more like mental jogging. 

The biggest challenge of free writing is our tendency to interrupt ourselves with judgments. We may find it’s hard to let go; we may want to control, shape, or manage what we are writing. 

With repetition you get the hang of simply turning on the tap of words and letting them flow. 

Benefits of free writing:

Free writing builds trust in the unknown, and strengthens powers of discipline, concentration, and focus. 

Journaling About Feelings

Journaling about feelings is a more targeted technique, and the time to use it is when you notice you’re upset.  

When triggered to use, or feeling hurt, anxious or angry, we don’t want to act on those feelings or share those raw emotions and thoughts just yet.

Rather, we can transmute the feelings into something easier to share and safer to act on by first spending time journaling on the question: “What’s going on with me right now?”

Very important with this journaling method: Don’t try to be good. Don’t should on yourself, by judging, suppressing or trying to improve the feelings. Feelings hate that. 

Rather, just let the feelings out. Let the thoughts, especially the ugly, selfish, angry, babyish ones, be just as they are. Personally, I’m a big believer in cussing in my journal. 

Benefits of Journaling About Feelings:

After releasing the full emotion and all it has to say into the journal, you feel better and you know more about what’s really going on. Then you can make calm decisions about what, if anything, you want to say and do from here. 

Lists

Lists are exactly what they sound like. You identify a category and list all the things you can think of that go in that category. 

Suggested lists to journal on:  

What am I grateful for? 

What do I surrender to my Higher Power? 

What am I holding as a burden today? 

What do I need help with today? 

What do I long for?

The options are infinite, so certainly make up your own categories. You can get very creative. 

However there are two key lists which are helpful for anyone in recovery: a List of Fears and a List of Resentments. That’s because fears and resentments are the biggest triggers to use. So definitely include the following two lists in your practice from time to time:

What am I mad about? 

What am I scared of?

After completing a list, the suggestion is that you take a moment to form the intention in your mind and heart, to surrender all of the items on the list to God, your higher power, or to your own inner Observer (whatever loving presence is the most trustworthy to you.) 

Benefits of Lists:

In addition to helping you get back to surrender, lists create space in the psyche, giving you room to breathe again. 

Dialogue

My personal favorite journaling tool is dialogue. 

The way to dialogue is write out a conversation, in the same format as you would a script for a play or a film. The dialogue is between yourself and some portion of yourself that you’re curious about or struggling with. 

Me: Hi, again, Fear. 

My Fear: Hi Holly Mae.

Me: How are you doing? 

Fear: Not great… 

Me: Ah. Want to tell me about it?

Go back and forth between the sides of you and witness their interaction. 

Benefits of Dialogue: 

Dialogue allows you to get to know the many different sides of your own nature. This helps you to dis-identify from all of them, while you gradually grow to care more for each side of you. Ultimately, dialogue leads you to harmonize all the forces moving and shaping you from within. 

~~

Have fun journaling!

Categories
Mental Health

Sleep Deprivation and Mental Health: How to heal the relationship between them

Sleep is closely connected to mental health in every way. Being deprived of rest can amplify your mental health struggles. Anxiety, addiction, depression, PTSD, and bipolar disorder are all exacerbated by lack of sleep. 

From the way it makes you feel to the physiological processes that happen on a holistic scale, your sleep is a critical part of you.  Without adequate rest, you may struggle to hold on to new information or recall familiar information. When we feel out of touch with the memories and moments that connect us to our sense of identity, it can perpetuate feelings of frustration and anxiety that may have been present prior to the sleeplessness.  

Before you can act on improving your sleep, let’s take a look at how sleep deprivation may be showing up in our mental (and physical) health. 

Feeling the Fog & Other Symptoms of Sleep Deprivation

During the waking hours when you’ve gotten less than ideal sleep, you may feel fuzzy or a step behind the rest of the world. You’ll be wasting precious energy reserves wading through the roadblocks of exhaustion when you’re not getting enough rest and it may lead to feelings of frustration, irritability, or broken concentration. Those foggy frustrations are just the beginning of the relationship sleep has with mental and physical health symptoms. 

If you’re experiencing sleep deprivation, you may be impacted by 
  • Exacerbated depression
  • Increased Anxiety
  • Irritability
  • Inhibited cognitive function 
  • Elevated blood pressure
  • Depressed immune system
  • Muscle fatigue 
  • Feelings of lethargy 

Sound familiar? It doesn’t have to be. 

Sleep deprivation impacts the lives and minds of each of us in different but indelible ways. We want to help you understand what’s happening in your mind when the sandman won’t bestow you with quality sleep, and how you can be your own bedtime hero. 

Let’s take a look together at how sleep deprivation and mental health are related so you can improve both. 

Factors Related to Sleep Deprivation & Mental Health

Quality and quantity

It’s not just the amount of sleep you get that’s tied to your mental health. The quality matters too. When you sleep poorly, you’ll feel every struggle more deeply, amplifying anxiety and deepening depression on the days those snoozing minutes just don’t add up. 

Less sleep means more mental health distress, and more mental health distress is likely to keep you awake at night. The compounding nature of the relationship between sleep and mental health is an ouroboros that’s consuming your energy in so many ways. 

Environment 

Consider the way you’re sleeping and how much you’re allowing yourself the space to get quality rest. Turn down the tone of the world in the hours before you go to sleep. Give yourself a barrier of relaxation and choose an activity that promotes feelings of calm for you. Reduce your exposure to noise and lower the lights but don’t move toward the bedroom until you’re ready to commit to sleep. 

If you can’t sleep, it’s important to get out of bed and choose another activity until you feel tired again before returning to bed. Laying in bed awake restarts your circadian rhythm and you may struggle to fully relax, creating a playground for awake thoughts during sleeping hours. 

Routine 

When it comes to healthy sleep, routine reigns supreme. Develop a plan and schedule you can commit to then stick to it. Think about what makes you feel sleepy, or prepared for sleep. Maybe it’s yoga or a breathing routine to calm your body, or a playlist that soothes the busy thoughts in your mind. From there, consider how you can incorporate the self-care and daily preparation you need to do. Think of it as a route that you take to sleep- your calm commute if you will. This routine will signal your body that it’s time for sleep, and as time goes on, it will be easier to shift into rest once it begins. 

Napping for better sleep 

Limiting naps or long lie-ins can be helpful in filling your sleep deficit. That doesn’t mean Naps of 15-20 minutes are great for a refresh that doesn’t leave you feeling tired after, and naps of around 90 minutes give you enough time to complete an entire sleep cycle. The struggle comes when you nap in that interim period- naps of 30-80 minutes can be disruptive to your sleep patterns and establish broken cycles that you struggle to regulate in nightly sleep. Those kinds of naps should be avoided for a more blissful bedtime. 

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